Page 59 of Fiorenzo

For the first time in a very long while, Enzo thought he might feel the same way.

“And what of Orazio?” Fiore asked.

Enzo supposed he ought to have expected that question. Still it struck his heart like a blade. He swallowed down the pain to speak. “I know not.”

Fiore stared at him. “You’ve not seen him since?”

“Nor heard from him,” Enzo forced himself to utter the agonizing truth. “Nor heard tell of anyone else encountering him since. Whether he is alive or dead—I presume alive, for if the Delfini had him kidnapped or killed then his family would have done something to avenge him by now.”

“But he needs not remain hidden,” Fiore pointed out. “He’s done nothing wrong. Unless his own shame has driven him into hiding.”

“No,” Enzo admitted. “He needn’t remain hidden.”

The unspoken truth hung in the air between them. The same truth that had haunted Enzo ever since that fateful day. The truth he wanted to ignore and yet loomed ever larger with every post that didn’t contain some note, some hint, some mere scrap from his Orazio. If Orazio hadn’t contacted Enzo by now, either something prevented him—something too horrible to consider—or he did not wish to.

“Have you tried to find him yourself?” Fiore asked, jolting Enzo from his melancholy musings. “Or would your family not permit it?”

“They’ve not forbidden me.” Enzo felt some small gratitude to Lucrezia for that. Of everything she’d denied him, she’d at least not denied him this.

Fiore gazed up at him in expectation. When the silence grew again, he broke it with a gentle enquiry. “And…?”

Enzo tamped down the bitter self-reproach mingling with shame that threatened to choke him. “I have written. He has not replied.”

Another silence fell, broken by Fiore’s soft voice. “I’m sorry to hear so.”

Enzo cleared his throat, which had tightened as if his own heart meant to strangle him. “You must think me beyond foolish.”

Fiore grimaced. “Hardly.”

“Vicious, then,” Enzo concluded. For only an unquenchable thirst for blood could explain how he chose a duel to the death over fleeing the fighting pit to find his lost Orazio.

“Impossible,” Fiore declared. His hard stare brooked no argument.

Enzo felt astonished enough that Fiore hadn’t recoiled from the revelation of his chirurgical ambitions. If Fiore thought no less of him for that—and for the duel besides—then perhaps he could trust him further still. Perhaps to the extent he’d trusted Orazio. He opened his mouth to speak on the peculiarity he’d hidden throughout their all-too-brief acquaintance.

Fiore met his parted lips with a kiss. Soft and gentle at first; then, as Enzo embraced him in turn, it deepened into something lingering and languid that drove all thought from his mind.

“You are an honorable man,” Fiore murmured against his lips when they withdrew for breath. “And better still, you are kind.”

Enzo did not consider that judgment entirely sound. Still it balmed his heart to hear Fiore say so. And he resolved with all his heart to live up to it.

~

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The true tale of the dueling duke confirmed most of what Fiore had already supposed. He had not yet connected the city’s swirling rumors to Enzo specifically, but he knew the bare sketch of the tale—a betrayal of honor at university and subsequent banishment. The details filled in by Enzo’s telling of it, however, created an altogether more haunting picture. One which tore at the heart-strings Fiore thought had snapped long ago. None of the gossips had told how the disgraced duke had lost a love he’d felt worth dying for.

The matter of Enzo’s education likewise served to make sense of all Fiore had wondered at. If someone had told him a year ago that he could bed a chirurgeon without remorse, he would never have believed it. Then again, he’d never known a chirurgeon capable of Enzo’s depth of empathy. He’d certainly received Fiore’s near-constant disdain for the medical profession with far more grace and charity than Fiore himself might have done if their positions were reversed. It left Fiore feeling rather stupid and a bit churlish besides. It was a wonder Enzo hadn’t abandoned him.

But if anything, it was Enzo who seemed to fear Fiore would abandon him in light of these revelations. Enzo, who despite his immense height and strength, somehow appeared so small and lost in the vast bed of the hunting lodge—particularly when his soft dark gaze met Fiore’s with a mournful cast to his scarred brow.

Which made Fiore all the more determined to prove he would stay.

Knowing full well just how little words meant when it came to fealty, loyalty, and everlasting affections, he preferred to express this intention through acts. He began by returning to the lute. It seemed to please Enzo’s ear, but any fool could play a lute, by Fiore’s reckoning, if music was all that was wanted.

As night fell, Fiore set the lute aside in favor of kisses and caresses. But while Enzo gladly welcomed him into his bed and slept contented entangled in his arms, he would not let caresses go further than kissing. When Fiore’s hand drifted down below their waists, Enzo caught it by the wrist and gently laid it against his scarred cheek instead. Which Fiore felt more than happy to oblige him in. Though he did still wonder at it. He concluded Enzo’s wounds must yet pain him too great to allow for any more athletic amusements. And while Fiore knew several ways to please them both without Enzo having to lift a finger, he didn’t want to press the issue. So instead he fell asleep smoothing his fingers through Enzo’s tresses.

When a run tore through Enzo’s stocking the following morning, Fiore thought he’d found an opportunity to be useful at last. But before he could offer to repair it, Enzo produced his own sewing kit and had already begun darning.

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